With the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), governments around the world have been exploring possibilities to adopt AI technologies in their operations to improve efficiency and citizen satisfaction. Few studies examine bureaucrats’ ...

Algorithms are rapidly transforming government bureaucracies. The implications of this transformation for the work of public service employees are not yet well understood. So far, the literature has mostly neglected the use of algorithms by these “screen-...

Patient demand for emergency medical services has never been greater. In the United States, as fewer people access medical care through a primary care provider, more people access care through the hospital emergency department (ED). Unlike other types of ...

Patient demand for emergency medical services continues to rise from all-time highs. Physicians generally respond to the rising demand by increasing the level of multitasking. What leads emergency department (ED) physicians to select which patients, and ...

The U.S. Child Welfare System (CWS) is increasingly seeking to emulate business models of the private sector centered in efficiency, cost reduction, and innovation through the adoption of algorithms. These data-driven systems purportedly improve ...

I argue that data-driven predictions work primarily as instruments for systematic extraction of discretionary power – the practical capacity to make everyday decisions and define one's situation. This extractive relation reprises a long historical ...

The introduction of robotic process automation (RPA) into the public sector has changed civil servants’ daily life and practices. One of these central practices in the public sector is discretion. The shift to a digital mode of discretion calls for an ...

In asylum decision-making, legal authorities rely on the criterion "credibility" as a measure for determining whether an individual has a legitimate asylum claim; that is, whether they have a well-founded fear of persecution upon returning to their ...

Algorithms have permeated throughout civil government and society, where they are being used to make high-stakes decisions about human lives. In this paper, we first develop a cohesive framework of algorithmic decision-making adapted for the public ...

Even when human point forecasts are less accurate than data-based algorithm predictions, they can still help boost performance by being used as algorithm inputs. Assuming one uses human judgment indirectly in this manner, we propose changing the ...

How individuals manage, organize, and complete their tasks is central to operations management. Recent research in operations focuses on how under conditions of increasing workload individuals can decrease their service time, up to a point, to complete ...

Problem definition: Collaboration is important in services but may lead to interruptions. Professionals exercise discretion on when to preempt individual tasks to switch to collaborative tasks. Academic/practical relevance: Discretionary task switching ...

Accuracy and consistency are critical for inspections to be an effective, fair, and useful tool for assessing risks, quality, and suppliers—and for making decisions based on those assessments. We examine how inspector schedules could introduce bias that ...

Using retail chain data, we study the effects of a tournament incentive plan based primarily on objective performance, but incorporating managerial discretion in the selection of winners. In principle, such plans could motivate employees to perform both ...

This tutorial aims to increase understanding of the importance of discretion in police decision-making. It will guide computer scientists, policy-makers, lawyers and others in considering practical and technical issues crucial to avoiding the ...

With the rise of computer algorithms in administrative decision-making, concerns are voiced about their lack of transparency and discretionary space for human decision-makers. However, calls to ‘keep humans in the loop’ may be moot points if we ...

The editorial sets the stage for the special issue on algorithmic transparency in government. The papers in the issue bring together transparency challenges experienced across different levels of government, including macro-, meso-, and micro-...

Work scheduling research typically prescribes task sequences implemented by managers. Yet employees often have discretion to deviate from their prescribed sequence. Using data from 2.4 million radiological diagnoses, we find that doctors prioritize ...

This study reviews 44 peer-reviewed articles on digital discretion published in the period from 1998 to January 2017. Street-level bureaucrats have traditionally had a wide ability to exercise discretion stirring debate since they can add their ...

This paper outlines the fundamentals of a mathematical model for the quantitative analysis of the legal phenomena. This model is not intended to be confined to a certain area of law, nor to a specific legal system, instead it is meant to provide with a ...

The three laws of robotics formulated by Isaac Asimov have attained widespread acceptance in Science Fiction literature. A recent film relates to one of the stories in Asimov's book. It deals with what seems to be a fundamental problem of discretionary ...